"While the nation was distracted last month by images of Saddam
Hussein's spider hole and dental exam, President George W. Bush
quietly signed into law a new bill that gives the FBI increased
surveillance powers and dramatically expands the reach of the
USA Patriot Act."

What Congress did was to take some of the worst provisions of the
notorious "Patriot Act II"a draft bill furiously rejected by
the American peopleand sneak them into a must-pass
appropriations bill. Your representatives just gave the FBI the
(unconstitutional) authority to snoop into your records at any
financial institution without any form of court order whatsoever.
And remember, the federal government recently re-defined
"financial institutions" to include car dealers, real estate
agents, coin dealers, jewelers, the post office, and even your
Internet service provider!

The article goes on to say:

"The so-called Patriot Act II was discovered by the Center for
Public Integrity last year, which exposed the draft legislation
and initiated a public outcry that forced the government to back
down on its plans.

"But critics say the government didn't abandon its goals after
the uproar; it simply extracted the most controversial provisions
from Patriot Act II and slipped them surreptitiously into other
bills, such as the Intelligence Authorization Act, to avoid
raising alarm.

"[James] Dempsey [executive director of the Center for Democracy
& Technology,] said the Intelligence Authorization Act is a
favorite vehicle of politicians for expanding government powers
without careful scrutiny. The bill, because of its sensitive
nature, is generally drafted in relative secrecy and approved
without extensive debate because it is viewed as a "must-pass"
piece of legislation. The act provides funding for intelligence
agencies.

"'It's hard for the average member to vote against it,' said
Dempsey, 'so it makes the perfect vehicle for getting what you
want without too much fuss.'"

That's right. The will of the American people is simply "too much
fuss."

PART II: PUBLIC PRISONS

Now along comes another article that seems unrelatedbut these
two stories are in fact, one in the same.

Paul Craig Roberts, that astute watchdog of the U.S. justice
system, writes today about three Americans sent to federal prison
in this country for eight yearsfor violating a *Honduran* law
it took federal agents six months even to uncover. Seems the
hapless citizens were selling lobster tails shipped to them in
plastic bags instead of cardboard boxes. Even the Honduran
government has protested the outrage. But no one's listening.
(http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts24.html)

And governments (especially the federal government) don't want to
listen.

"Russia, which is currently in the process of releasing a number
of improperly incarcerated citizens, has a[n incarceration] rate
of 644 per 100,000, and a 2002 total [prison] population of
around 900,000. For the most part, the U.S. rate is five to eight
times that of the Western European nations and Canada. The rate
in England and Wales, for example, is 139 persons imprisoned per
100,000 residents while in Norway it is 59 per 100,000."

In the free and freedom loving U.S., 474 out of every 100,000
people are in prisonthe majority of them for non-violent
offenses. That's more than two million individuals, about one in
every 143 Americans.

Dr. Roberts notes, "Naive Americans tend to regard miscarriages
of justice, such as the lobster import case, as rare examples of
legal idiocy that somehow will be corrected by the legal system.
However, such cases are routine and are seldom if ever corrected.
In America today law enforcement boils down to the exercise of
power by unaccountable prosecutors. Justice is not served by
ensnaring the innocent. ...

"Americans are uninformed about the tyrannical nature of their
criminal justice system. Until they become personally ensnared
in the system, Americans believe that police and prosecutors
would never convict an innocent person. Once they experience the
system, Americans are terrified by the system's indifference to
whether a defendant has committed a crime."

TWO STORIES, ONE MORAL

So there they are. Two very different stories, one from the
legislative branch and one from the judicial, with the assistance
of the executive.

But they grow from the same root. And they feed on the same
nutrients.

Both outrages spring from an attitude that threatens to consume
what little is left of our republica republic in which
citizens were sovereign and the government served only with
citizens' consent.

This attitude is: Government can do whatever it wantsand
citizens must be either manipulated or coerced into serving the
government's purposes.

Both stories also show how the government feeds on the people.
Secret lawsof which the "Patriot Act II" outrage is only one
recent exampleare impossible to obey. Secret laws and harsh
violations for paperwork errors help fill courtroom dockets, and
eventually prisons, with confused and abused citizens.

This is NOT how a government of free people works!

The government of a free nation of informed citizens does not
needand would not wantto enact its policies through
secret rulings or secret legislation.

The government of a free nation would not need to snoop into any
peaceable citizen's business, and would certainly never seize
private records without a court order. This is how communist
East Germany operated. The Bill of Rights forbids such things
from legally being done in the U.S.

The government of a free nation would not waste taxpayers money
and human lives on prosecutions whose only purpose is so
prosecutors can run up impressive conviction statistics.

The government of a free nation would never desire to imprison
the innocentlet alone go out of its way to do so.

The two developments aboveand hundreds more revelations from
the last two U.S. administrationsuncover a pattern of
government by ruthlessness, government by deception, government
by brute force, government by paranoia, government by by
arrogance, government by "whatever we can get away with." Above
all, they are signs that any real rule of the people, by the
people, and for the people is dead, dead,dead.

OUR ONE HOPE: PEOPLE POWER

The executive branch has become brutally dominantone of the
key signs of a developing police state. Congress has totally
abdicated its responsibilities to become a mere rubber stamp for
the will of the executive branchanother police state
characteristic. The courts, too, routinely put their stamp of
approval on the worst abuses of federal power, then they add
their own consuming will to punishagain, both deeds are
those of an incipient police state.

There is only one power left in America that gives us any hope
of redemption or restoration as a free land: People Powerthe
power of the people to rise up and demand a return of rights and
liberty

We admit that even People Power has only a slight hope of
restoring America. Few citizens seem to care, and the government
is often ruthless in attempting to silence the few who do care
and do resist its grasp.

Nevertheless, People Poweryour poweris the only power
remaining that can restore liberty in the face of such corruption
and outrageous injustice.

The foundation of all People Power is knowledge. Before we can
restore freedom, we must persuade our friends and neighbors to
understand and appreciate freedom.

We can't tell you how the battle for freedom will come out, but
we can tell you where the fight begins: with the Bill of Rights.
It doesn't require complex legal or philosophical arguments to
begin restoring freedom. All it takes is reminding people that
they possessed certain rights *before any government ever
existed*, and to remind them that the Bill of Rights is a
declaration and affirmation of the most important rights of
individualsincluding they, themselves, and the beloved
members of their families and their communities.

The government, though its arrogant use of power, has trampled
the Bill of Rights in the dirt under its feet. But pick that
Bill up, dust it off, show it to everyone you know and *explain
why it matters* (especially explain it to children and students)
... and we have real hope of taking our country back.

The State vs. the People: The Rise of the American Police State This
book by Claire Wolfe and Aaron Zelmanwhich is probably on the government's
list of top 10 books to burn will show you exactly what a police state
is and how our own government is growing to resemble one. (http://www.jpfo.org/tsvtp.htm)

"Reach Out for the Bill of Rights"Then use this article to find common
ground with people in other parts of the political spectrum who may share
your convictions about fundamental liberties. (http://www.jpfo.org/outreach.htm)

This may be a long and difficult fight. We may not win. But if
we don't put heart and soul into restoring the Bill of Rights
for all citizens, the alternative is more deadly than any battle.
The alternative is surrendering to the growing tyranny of the
American police state.

The growth of government power is like the growth of a tumor in
our flesh. A Band-Aid approach won't fix it. We mustall of
uscut the cancer of all-powerful, all-ruthless government
out of our society.